Skin

"Skin Tight" is the fifth studio album by the Ohio Players and the first released through the Mercury label. "Skin Tight" signified a turning point in the group's career towards a more jazzy and polished funk sound. The album began the Players' dominant platinum selling period, and would bring them a much bigger audience. In fact, this release would outsell all of their previous LPs combined. The band produced and recorded the album in Chicago, with Barry Mraz as recording engineer. The final mix was mastered by Lee Hulko.

British hard rock supergroup Snakecharmer was formed in 2013 by former members of Whitesnake, Wishbone Ash, and Thunder, among others. Guitar wiz Micky Moody had enjoyed a long and storied career in blues-rock dating all the way back to his work with Tramline in the '60s. After his acrimonious departure from Whitesnake in 1983, he formed the Snakes and the Company of Snakes in a bid to re-create the original blues-rock sound of Whitesnake before they became a hair metal band. After a chance meeting with his old Whitesnake bandmate, bassist Neil Murray, the pair decided to make some music for old times' sake and set about putting a band together.

Ry Cooder has always believed in the "mutuality in music," and this may be no more evident in his career than with his fifth album, Chicken Skin Music (a Hawaiian colloquialism, synonymous with goosebumps). Even more than usual, Cooder refuses to recognize borders – geographical or musical – presenting "Stand By Me" as a gospel song with a norteño arrangement, or giving the Jim Reeves country-pop classic, "He'll Have to Go," a bolero rhythm, featuring the interplay of Flaco Jimenez's accordion and Pat Rizzo's alto sax. Elsewhere, he teams with a pair of Hawaiian greats – steel guitarist and singer Gabby Pahinui and slack key guitar master Atta Isaacs – on the Hank Snow hit "Yellow Roses" and the beautiful instrumental "Chloe." If Cooder's approach to the music is stylistically diverse, his choice of material certainly follows suit. Bookended by a couple of Leadbelly compositions, Chicken Skin Music sports a collection of songs ranging from the aforementioned tracks to the charming old minstrel/medicine show number "I Got Mine" and the syncopated R&B of "Smack Dab in the Middle".

From the minds of Electronic Saviors founder and Rein[Forced] front man Jim Semonik and Aslan Faction’s Lee Lauer comes Red Lokust, offering up the pair’s own brand of aggressive dance floor fury. Funded via Kickstarter campaign, the band’s debut album, The Repercussions of Shedding Your Skin offers up a vitriolic mix of scathing electro leads and infectious beats and bass lines that many will expect from Lauer, while Semonik delivers the emotional core of each song with his signature and straightforward brand of distorted rasp and lyrical savvy…

Skin Dive is a jazz vocal album by Michael Franks, released in 1985 with Warner Bros. Records. It was Franks' ninth studio album, and the first he co-produced himself. The single off this album, "Your Secret's Safe With Me", is his biggest Adult Contemporary hit, peaking at #4.

Elvin keeps the cornpone good-ole-boy schtick down to an acceptable level on this, perhaps his most serious solo album to date. Although Bishop's good-time approach is still evident on tunes like "I'm Gone," "Right Now Is the Hour," the acoustic "Radio Boogie" (with a guest shot from Charlie Musselwhite) and "Country Blues," the playing and lyrics get much deeper and more serious with "Shady Lane," "The Skin They're In," "Middle Aged Man" and "Long Shadows." Perhaps the most cohesive album he's made to date, revealing an artist coming to grips with his muse, his age and his art, all at once.

Part of Avril Lavigne's appeal – a large part of it, actually – is that she's a brat, acting younger than her 17 years on her 2002 debut, Let Go, and never seeming like she much cared about the past (she notoriously mispronounced David Bowie's name when reading Grammy nominations), or anything for that matter. She lived for the moment, she partied with sk8er bois, she didn't want anything complicated, and she sang in a flat, plain voice that illustrated her age as much as her silly, shallow lyrics…